You are here

News & Trends

This department of Rental Housing Journal is dedicating to keeping apartment owners, multifamily executives, real estate investors, landlords and other real estate professionals up to date with the latest trends in real estate, property management and more. Here you will find trends in rents, real estate sales, apartment development, the economy at large and property management and investing industry matters.

“We selected a diverse range of community types (luxury, c-level, etc.) and locations (Southeast, Southwest, Midwest, urban, suburban, etc.). Overall, we tracked 823,446 sessions on these various property websites, all from the 2017 calendar year,” the company said in the study.

Described as the “ultimate urban experience,” leasing has started at 570 Jessie Street, 47 urban apartments located in Mid-Market, San Francisco, according to a release.

570 Jessie is an 8-story residential building with 32 studios, starting at $2,600 per month, and 15 one-bedroom units, starting at $3,500 per month. Six of the units will be offered at below market rate, in cooperation with the Mayor’s Office of Housing.

The 500 block of Jessie Street was formerly occupied by warehouses and commercial spaces. In 2015, 550 Jessie Street (60 apartments) was the first residential building to be built on the Street.

Currently, 521 Jessie Street (83 apartments) is under construction, and is set to be complete next year. In addition to 570 Jessie Street, this half block of Jessie Street will soon be home to nearly 200 apartments.

A new study of the 5 most expensive and least expensive cities for renting found the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,000 more expensive in San Francisco than it is in New York.

How much an apartment costs in 50 U.S. cities was the goal of personal finance website GOBankingRates when it examined 50 major cities across the U.S. to identify the cost of a one-bedroom apartment.

In addition to median rent prices, the study analyzed key factors including the cost of basic utilities and each city's walkability score. GOBankingRates also identified the percentage of apartments for rent in each city with the following amenities: dishwashers, washer-dryers, pools, fitness centers, parking garages and pet-friendly policies.

Top 5 Most Expensive Cities for Renting

The nation’s largest student-housing development built under a public-private partnership, a 50-acre, 3,406-bed, 2.2-million-square-foot apartment community, is now open on the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, Texas, according to a release.

The Park West Apartments, a $368 million mixed-use luxury student housing project, was organized through a public-private partnership between the Texas A&M University System, Servitas development, management and operations in Irving, Texas, and The Weitz Company, construction manager.

The Seattle City Council has passed an ordinance 8-0 to bar landlords from using criminal records to screen tenants based on past arrests or criminal convictions, with the exception of sex offenders, according to a release.

“The Fair Chance Housing ordinance would prevent landlords from screening applicants based on criminal convictions; arrests that did not lead to a conviction; convictions that have been expunged, vacated or sealed; juvenile records,” Councilmember Lisa Herbold said in a release.

“The bill also prohibits the use of advertising language that categorically excludes people with arrests or conviction records. The legislation does not apply to people registered as sex offenders who committed their crime as an adult.

During the first half of 2017, eight of the top ten metropolitan markets for commercial and multifamily construction starts ranked by dollar volume registered decreased activity compared to a year ago, according to Dodge Data & Analytics.

At the same time, metropolitan markets ranked 11 through 20 showed growth for nine of the ten markets, as smaller geographic areas are picking up the slack from the deceleration underway in those cities that have led the commercial and multifamily upturn over the past several years.

At the national level, the volume of commercial and multifamily construction starts during the first half of 2017 was $87.5 billion, down 9% from last year’s first half, although still a slight 1% above what was reported during the first half of 2015.

A majority of people say new home affordability is the main reason they do not own a home, and not a desire to have the flexibility of renting, according to new research from John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

The trend of more people choosing to rent may be tied directly to the fact that new homes now are simply too expensive and unaffordable for consumers. Plus, builders have moved away from building new homes under $200,000 and focused on much higher priced new homes, according to the report.

“Rising new home prices across the nation have eroded new home sales under $200,000 and contributed to lackluster new home sales volumes,” write David Jarvis, John Burns Senior Vice President, and Matt Farris, Associate.

People selling their homes in Seattle have seen some of the highest profits in the nation at a time when home-sellers across the country are seeing the highest profits in 10 years, according to an ATTOM Data Solutions release.

Seattle has an on-going issue of lack of housing supply

“An ongoing issue in the greater Seattle area is a lack of supply which is aggressively driving up home prices,” Matthew Gardner, chief economist at Windermere Real Estate, in Seattle said in the release.

“The only short-term solution is to build more homes, but thanks to land constraints and construction costs, this simply is not happening at a rate that you would normally expect in a market like this,” Gardner said.